Wednesday, 4 January 2012

Theory vs Reality: A comparison between training and a business start-up

Happy New Year to all, may 2012 bring you enough to feel content abouth. 2011 has been a very challenging and exciting year for me and I have run comparisons between my two biggest projects which I took on in 2011. The first one was to train for a half ironman trialthlon event and the second one was to get my business, Logajob, up and running (in no particular order). Training for a half ironman I knew would be tough purely due to the amount of hours it requires, the event is a 2km swim, a 90km cycle and a 21.1km run. I personally am unable to do these distances back to back with no training so I knew I'd have to train for this to make the event comfortable. I read up a little on what is expected, I read up a little on what nutrition is best, I read up a little on how to prevent injuries etc. Well, from the beginning of my training period, all the best theory in the world wasn't able to prevent the fact that I,
1) Dislocated a shoulder
2) Sprained an ankle
3) Depleted my body of electrolytes and was unable to train for 5 days
4) Picked up a virus and painful joints
5) Had a puncture on a rural road and when I tried to fix it my pump was broken!
6) Tore ligaments in the ankle I had previously sprained and
8) Organised baby sitters and at the last minute Mr 5 punctures his head and a trip to A&E is needed
7) Had my car keys stolen from the beach during an ocean swim.............to name but a few.

These were all setbacks I certainly didn't plan however, only once they actually happened to me was I able to work out how to tackle the problem and find a workable solution. I wasn't prepared until I needed to be prepared and found actual ways other than theoretical solutions, to work around my setbacks. I think what it has shown me is that the same can be said for business and a start-up business. There is so much literature out there on what to do and what not to do and how to create a successful business. These articles are helpful and give us inspiration but I'm finding as I'm going along with the growth of Logajob that a lot of things are learned experiences and no matter how much we plan and pre empt and read up on things, a start-up business will throw you many curves and challenges along the way no matter how 'prepared' you are. Just like with the training, only then will you truly come up with a way to solve it. The way I see it, don't be scared to make those mistakes, as long as you learn from them they are there to make you and your business grow. My theory article tells me that the growth phase is one of the most exciting and dynamic, I hope my true life business experiences depict this in 2012. My training programme tells me that with all the training done, the event should go smoothly, once again I hope the theory and practical match up for me this weekend at the half ironman event. Challenges and setbacks are life's learning curves, may you deal with them effectively in 2012.